OIT News – August 2009

OIT News
Monthly news briefs, information and announcements
Office of Information Technology, NC State University
Issue 22, August 2009

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For OIT tweets, follow @NCStateOIT
For the up-to-the minute reports on OIT systems, see SysNews:
https://sysnews.ncsu.edu
For help with computing problems, contact the NC State University Help Desk:
https://help.ncsu.edu

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01: Psst…Mark Your Calendar: Computer Security Day is Oct. 26
02: OIT invites campus community to ClassTech’s open house
03: OIT changes Windows environment in Unity Labs
04: Computing Essentials Web site retired
05: OIT to sponsor Brown Bag Lunch and Learn, Twitter: Basic Use and Business Use
06: HPC offers free short course in OpenMP programming

07: SIS Prerequisite Checker and Scheduling Officers training available
08: SAR training – Sept. 22
09: Secure your laptop lock combination, turn the tumblers! 


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01: Psst…Mark Your Calendar: Computer Security Day is Oct. 26
Cybersecurity is a real concern for today’s computer users, and the Office of Information Technology (OIT) wants you to build a strong defense against security threats!

NC State students, faculty and staff are invited to attend OIT’s third annual Computer Security Day: Cybersecurity Self Defense from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 26, 2009, in Talley Student Center. The event provides insight into the privacy and security issues surrounding electronically stored sensitive information and offers ways to keep your computer and data safe.

An internationally celebrated event, Computer Security Day is designed to raise awareness and promote best practices in information technology (IT) security.

During this event, there will be general and technical discussions about social networking, current privacy issues in legislation, Web application security, antivirus protection, disk encryption, mobile device security, tools for desktop security, identity theft prevention, identity management and access control, and much more.

For upcoming information about this event, visit the Computer Security Day 2009 Web site.

02: OIT invites campus community to ClassTech’s open house
The OIT ClassTech unit invites the campus community to come to its Fall 2009 Open House. ClassTech provides support and other services for classroom technologies on campus.

Open House sessions will be held from 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 18 in 301 Riddick Hall and from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 18 in 201 Park Shops. The orientation provided during the Open House session will allow you to become familiar with state-of-the art instructional technology classrooms as well as the support staff.

If you are unable to attend the Open House sessions but would like to get acquainted with the technology, please contact ClassTech to schedule a training appointment.

03: OIT changes Windows environment in Unity Labs
OIT plans to begin migrating Windows-based Unity Lab computers from Novell to Active Directory this fall semester.

In March of 2009, the campus Active Directory Working Group made the decision to go with WolfTech as the central Active Directory Environment for campus. A central active directory environment provides a single, secure location for commonly accessed user and resource data. OIT started a pilot evaluation on Aug. 10 in several labs – Sullivan, Honors Village and First Year Commons. All labs are expected to be migrated by Oct. 8.

For more detailed information about roaming profile support, application delivery implications, and anticipated support schedule changes, see the article, “Windows Environment Migration in the Unity Labs.”

04: Computing Essentials Web site retired
As part of OIT’s ongoing effort to provide centralized and comprehensive information to the campus community, the topics formerly contained in the Computing Essentials Web site have been updated and incorporated into the OIT Web site. Computing Essentials topics of particular interest to new students can be found in the For Students view of the OIT Web site.

Many former Computing Essentials links now redirect the readers to the OIT Web site. However, references and links to the Computing Essentials Web site remain in numerous Web sites across campus. Please take a moment to scan any Web content you have or provide that might contain references or links to Computing Essentials and update them to the OIT home page (https://oit.ncsu.edu). If you have any questions or encounter any problems, contact the NC State University Help Desk at 515-HELP (4357) or via email at help@ncsu.edu.

05: OIT to sponsor Brown Bag Lunch and Learn, Twitter: Basic Use and Business Use
The OIT invites the campus community to attend the Brown Bag Lunch and Learn session, “Twitter: Basic Use and Business Use” from 12:15 to 1 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 27 in 216 Scott Hall. Twitter is a free social networking blogging service that allows users to send “tweets” or brief updates to each other.  

John Martin of OIT Information and News Services will show how to sign up for Twitter, what “Following” and “Followers” are all about, how to direct tweets, and how to send private tweets.

You’ll also take a quick look at a few Twitter tools such as TweetGrid, TweetDeck, and Digsby. And finally, you’ll look at ways Twitter is being used in the business world, including a look at how some OIT staff are using it. Feel free to bring your own laptop or Internet-accessible PDA to sign up and/or become Followers of each other on the spot. To register, visit ClassMate.

06: HPC offers free short course in OpenMP programming
OIT’s High Performance Computing (HPC) service invites faculty, graduate students, and others interested in parallel programming for multi-core computers to attend an upcoming short course on OpenMP. The OpenMP library provides the easiest means of parallelizing serial codes to run using multiple cores. The course will show how to convert some simple C or Fortran codes to run OpenMP and will discuss strategies for parallelizing some larger codes.

The OpenMP course will meet Wednesday afternoons, 2:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Aug. 26, Sept. 2 and Sept. 9 in the OIT Training Center (basement of the Laundry Building, 2341 Stinson Drive). Dr. Gary Howell, OIT’s applications scientist for high performance computation, will be the instructor.

Please obtain an NCSU HPC account before attending the workshop. Faculty can start HPC projects and add students (at no charge) from the Web site https://www.ncsu.edu/it/hpc/About/Contact.php. For more information and to register for the short course, contact Gary Howell at gary_howell@ncsu.edu.

07: SIS Prerequisite Checker and Scheduling Officers training available
The Student Implementation Systems (SIS) team announces that a prerequisite checker is now available for faculty and department administrators. The checker indicates whether each student on a class roster meets a catalog prerequisite or co-requisite, meets a class requisite, or meets the reserve requisite for a section. The checker also indicates whether the catalog requisite is being enforced by the college or department. To use the checker, click on the “Class Requisite Roster” button at the bottom of the class roster.

Refresher training for Scheduling Officers will be offered from 2:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Monday, Aug. 17 in Room 200, Park Shops. Registration is not required.

08: SAR training – Sept. 22
Security Access Request (SAR) training for campus requestors and approvers will be held from 9:30 a.m. to noon on Tuesday, Sept. 22 in the EAS Training Lab (302 Harrelson Hall). Please visit Classmate to view available classes and to sign up for training.

09: Secure your laptop lock combination, turn the tumblers! 
Securing your work laptop, notebook or tablet with a combination cable lock is a good way to avoid theft of sensitive data and computer equipment that can cause embarrassment and cost for both you and the university.

When people use cables with combination locks for securing their laptops at their workstations, they usually remember to turn the tumblers when they secure the laptop. But what happens when they remove the laptop? Many people don’t turn the tumblers on the opened lock, because it is much easier to lock the laptop later if the combination is already set. This defeats the security of the combination lock. Anyone can come by your workstation when the laptop has been removed and note the open combination on the lock. They can then come back later to steal the laptop when it’s locked to the cable. OIT-Security and Compliance reminds users to turn the tumblers after securing or removing the laptop from the cable.

 

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For help with computing at NC State, contact the NC State Help Desk:
help@ncsu.edu, phone 515-HELP (4357), or visit Room 101, West Dunn Building.

Send your comments or suggestions about OIT News to Rhonda Greene, OIT Information and News Services, at rhonda_greene@ncsu.edu.